we'll take questions about the hacking of u.s. weapons systems by the chinese. the 'll be joined by author of a mother jones article. ♪ host: members of congress are out of washington this week for a weeklong recess while president obama travels to chicago to do some fundraising for the democratic party. here in washington general ray odierno will discuss the challenges facing u.s. military as well as troop levels in afghanistan ever -- afghanistan and iraq. the bipartisan group looks at coverage. a new report that finds that four out of 10 mothers are the sole or primary breadwinners in

u.s. households. we want to get your reaction to these numbers and the trend in society. for democrats, 202-585-3880. for republicans, 202-585-3881. for independents, 202-585-3882. also send us a tweet, twitter.com/c-spanwj. e-mail us as well, journal@c- span.org. here is the research poll from their web site. breadwinner moms is the title of the poll. a record 40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family. that was just 11% in 1960. they are made up of two very different groups. 5.1 million are married

mothers, 8.6 million, 63% are single moms. we have a fourth line set aside this morning for breadwinner moms. what is it like for you to be the sole or primary breadwinner? the income gap is quite large. the median total family income of mothers who lurk -- who earn more than their husbands was 80,000 in 2011, well above the national median and nearly four times the 23,000 median for families led by a single mother. compared with all mothers with children age 18, married mothers who out earn their husbands are slightly older, disproportionately white and college-educated. single mothers are younger, more

likely to be black and hispanic and less likely to have a college degree. diane is joining us from california. an early morning for her. your thoughts? caller: that is right. how're you this morning? host: good morning. caller: i am not -- i am a single mother, but i am not the statistics being reported there. i am not hispanic, not african- american, i am quite, caucasian. my son was 42. i just lost my son april 30 to melanoma. father at a very young age, when he was very young, due to abuse after he came back from vietnam. i educated my son. every weekend we went to the library. he was reading a three and a half years old.

i have a bachelors of arts in science and business communications with an emphasis on math. i am educated. i work for the phone company and for law enforcement. son through uc santa barbara and assisted him i am going to law school in los angeles. i am bilingual. spanish] the president is coming to california, about 30 miles away from me, this coming week, june the 6 4/7, and we are looking forward to having him here in this area. host a meeting with the chinese leader. caller: yes. conversation,our i am a very proud mother.

for a worked communications company, direct tv, and was commemorated by his men here. they closed the office on the day of the funeral, made the ninth. and have actually dedicated a conference room because he was a trainer, specially certified by homeland security to train these men and was a lawyer and appeared in court for them on , thosetheir law briefs types of things here in san diego. host: i am sorry to hear about your son. can i ask you about the impact you think your education level had on being a single mom and providing for your son like you did? caller: very good question. my education, you know, education was my key from the time i was a very, very young

woman. my impact on my son, obviously, i raised him in the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, he went to college in 1991. i got him there. by miki kim my child at three and a half how to read, going to our local library in oceanside, california, having read books, listen to audio tapes, check out books, he was so excited. we used to attend little -- they would have videos there, movies for the children on the weekend. i did not have a lot of money, but i worked in law enforcement with a steady and come. i have health insurance that i provided for my son until he was 23 at uc santa barbara. made himmpact that

successful, the funeral director at the home in san marcus said that we did a wonderful job and that our son -- that my son earned a doctorate degree. many people tell me that, but to something ihat is knew all along. i have a beautiful granddaughter, daughter-in-law. my impact on that institution, haven could not ever, ever done anything but be a success because of my attention to him all the time, giving him everything my all. have a lot of money, but i knew how to get what i needed and what made us happy. going to the beach, going to the library, going to the space theater in san diego. to leave itoing

there. thank you for the call. i want to get some other voices in as well. some more numbers from this research poll, this survey, saying that women work in families and the percentage saying that increasing numbers of women working for pay outside the home has made it easier or harder for families to live comfortably. 67% say that it has made it easier and that for marriage to be successful, 50% say that women working outside the home has made successful marriages harder. 74% say harder for parents to raise children as well. grace in long beach, new york. caller: your wording on that, blacks and hispanics, i am black [indiscernible] four sons.

change thed to wording. the wording came from the research center and you are breaking up there a little bit. talk a little bit more about why you think the wording needs to be changed, i did not hear you. caller: because it makes it sound like blacks and hispanics did not marry. it makes it sound like we're just out there in the street. host: ok, got it. marion, md., rockville. caller: i am african-american and actually i do not really take offense to this study. i was raised by a single mom. sorry, i cannot really hear you. host: we are listening to you. go ahead. caller: i was raised by a single mom, go ahead. she was married before hand. i have three siblings.

mothers often will not take the credit, doing what they can, a model marriage but she got a divorce and she had to raise four children alone and she became a nurse practitioner and by all appearances seemed like she was successful. couldd the best that she with all of us. but in truth, single mothers, it takes a toll on them. they cannot be everywhere at every time. it takes its toll in other ways , specifically with african- americans, i see that. host: let me stop you there. you say that it takes its toll. is there a role for the federal government to assist in meeting those challenges? >> it is kind of like a cycle and i wanted to say this quickly.

host: go ahead. caller: it is a cycle in the sense that i do not think it is government. it is more or less people learning how to relate and work through the challenges. how they can do that -- you have a high rate of abandonment, a 78% of black children i think are raised without fathers in the home. we cannot take offense to this, we have to be honest and realized that children are created to need a mom and dad, not just either mom or dad. people need them to raise the children correctly. single not a swipe at moms. i am in no way disparaging single moms. i realize many the best they can given the circumstances. but this cannot be the best model, that is my thing. it is not. , getest model is to relate

married, raise your children in a two-family home. host: mark, are you there? wrong line. there you are. caller: i just want to say that in the poorest communities throughout the united states is where you will find the large influx of women who are single parents. basically the breadwinner in the family. it is mainly concentrated in the poorest communities throughout the united states. host: your the first caller talked about being a single mom -- you heard the first caller talked about being a single mother and her education level. given that you say that most of the concentration of breadwinner moms is in poor areas, is there a role for the government to

help with education levels? absolutely very and i think the government does play an important role. given the fact that education is the " and " ticket out of the -- thee undquote ticket out of poor communities, i think that the government does have a role. host: what should it be? caller: there is not much to say here, but i think the government should somehow maybe i guess reform the welfare code. too not know, do something encourage both parents to be in the house and whatnot. it is kind of hard to say. i am not sure. sorry. host: got it. facebook comments --

host: those of some of the comments from our facebook page. on twitter this one -- host: tina, oklahoma city. caller: i am also a single parent, but i was married and the difference, i have two college graduates who have very good jobs and i do not think it is the job of the government to take care of kids. i think the difference is that when i had my kids, i was older,

so i was more mature. the difference between now and those high rates of divorces is back in the day, women had to stay with abusive men and they stayed in it because they felt like they had to. i think women are making more money now and can take care of their families. my daughter had a sociology class when she was in college and they told her that she was not the norm. we were not for, we did not get welfare. i have had my job for 28 years. i had a retirement plan. they have been educated and had insurance, but as well they have a father who lives down the street from me and that is normally not the norm. we were married and got a divorce for whatever reason, but it is not the government's plan and people need to quit giving in to the racial thing because now think the white women are having kids because they feel like they have gone too old and

that is the thing to do. i wanted to have my career and my kids, but they never talk about the statistics on that. i have friends whose kids come up worse than people who raise by single-parent home. they stay in their house. they have the whistles and bells and stay in their room and work on the computer and the mom does not want to go in and blow up everybody. host: all right, the metro section of "the washington post" has more on this subject.

host: that is from "the washington post" this morning on the pole. inside, another graphic for you. morers are increasingly educated than fathers. you can see that on the rise from 1960 to 2011, 22.7% of mothers more educated than

fathers. that is our topic for all of you this morning. we want to get your thoughts on these numbers and the trends we are seeing. in other news these are some headlines from the papers, from "the new york post" this morning. the house judiciary committee is probing whether he lied under oath to congress about agency's surveillance of journalists. host: jonathan turley rights in a column for "usa today."

"attorney general holder must go." he says -- host: on immigration reform, this is from "the new york post" as well. be affectedtates to by immigration reform law. this number comes from the center for immigration studies. and immigration the whole group that helps to synchronize these efforts is blitzing the airwaves again on this issue.

"numbers usa says that the immigration reform law will give 33 million new work permits to foreign job-seekers over the next 10 years at a time when host: that is on immigration legislation. this is from "usa today." "gop districts get less hispanic moves after redistricting democrats out of dominated districts, making both districts less competitive in a general

election. gop districts wound up with less hispanic voters." that is part of the debate in congress as they take up immigration reform legislation. the headline yesterday, president obama checking out the rebuilding efforts on the jersey shore. the new york daily news, 100 million cross up, the red cross organization raised "$303 million after hurricane sandy, but $110 million remained unspent nearly six months after the storm. red cross officials say that they held onto the funds so that they could offer better -- better help in the long term. on the president's trip to the new jersey shore, this from "the new york post." property taxes been cut in new

york city on single-family homes in neighborhoods hit by hurricane sandy. mayor bloomberg announced that yesterday." we will get some of the headlines here throughout the morning. back to our reports that we are sharing for all of you this morning that found four out of 10 households had mothers that are the sole or primary providers. oklahoma city, vance, good morning. is ar: the nuclear family , and thate, children is not really the family that has been throughout most of history. most of history is and send uncles, cousins, extended family and grandparents. most societies. other people look to the welfare states as somehow destroying the

nuclear family unit. daniel patrick moynihan and his report on the state of black families in black neighborhoods since 1965, this wake-up call to the destruction of that family and such, that is really kind of secondary to the overall destruction of the family unit, which really began more out of ,he first and second world wars where people were encouraged, given every encouragement to for a small family unit of just a husband and wife and children and to leave the grandparents, leave the cousins, leave the aunts and uncles and such. it was not the welfare state as

much that caused that as it was the warfare state. ae warfare state wanted perve nuclear family so that there could be easy mobility for for weapons manufacturing and -- in other parts of the country and people could be far more mobile. host: what do you think that means for today? caller: today it means a growing trend where forced progress through government has interfered with the relationships among these individuals in the family units to such an extent that, speaking as a man it seems that it becomes a man's role in the family becomes increasingly,

increasingly less rebellion. seems tohere the man by the state, as well as by others he associates with, that his place as a father and a is not that important, not that important at all. women, we can do it too. we can work 15, 18 hours per day and dother, breadwinner, the math. well, you know, you as the inband might be resourceful mowing the lawn or doing a few things like that, but otherwise you are just not that important

of theoverall viability family in future generations. host: what do you think the impact of that is on society, public policy? caller to a public policy, it will create work trends in the future. with the advancement of technology, just in vitro fertilization, we could get to a ,oint where carcinogenesis where men are just not needed at all for reproduction, parts and a genesis might become a standard for many centuries to come. host: brent, conn., independent caller, your thoughts? caller: i am an african-american male, 30's, a family of four. my parents were married for 38

years. i have four siblings. even with two parents in the house hold it was extremely difficult for my parents. the mother stayed home, my father worked, earning low- income throughout the majority of his career. there are institutional things that the government could do. 1950'serred to the models, a caller made that reference. i think we can have longer school days so that single parent mothers have opportunities to work and not have to worry about the cost of child care, just for your child to go to an adequate preschool can cost between 800 to $1,200 a month. that as we start to look at single-parent households and say the threshold of poverty is $26,000 per year and you expect this person in turn to pay for child care, get off of

work early, or get off work part-time? you place that person in economic constraints. but they also recently released a report a couple of days ago that said that americans believed that an adequate income for a family of four is $58,000 to $60,000 per year. change the threshold of what we consider to be low- income as well and take another look at that. i think that the government can also provide some service subsidized or paid time off to provide single parent mothers, you know, of course check their taxes to make sure they are single parents, but allow them to get vocational training or pursue higher education opportunities. a lot of major universities across the country offer online learning degrees or part-time learning degrees for adult students.

also, just awareness. for example, president obama recently signed a tuition tax credit for families whose household income is lower than $200,000. if there was more awareness regarding programs like that, perhaps in addition to launder singledays, allowing parents to get new skills and events in the workforce, we might see some changes, but conversely there are also single mother households where the woman is extremely successful, has an advanced degree, a senior vp of some corporations and cannot find a suitable spells. she prefers like what the color reference to earlier, to raise her child alone because she cannot find an adequate companion. host: let me add to what you're saying. in the newspapers they had a

quote from one single mom who said she is not even looking for a job that relates to her skill level, she is looking for a job that allows for flex time, allows her to leave, pick up for kids, telecommute. those sorts of things. the caller mentioned education level and government assistance. these numbers are from "the new york times." this is from their blog on the .conomy these are non-elderly households receiving unemployment insurance, food stamps, or medicaid. you can see how low the numbers are with higher at levels of education. 60% in 2010. doctorate is less than 15% in both of those years. the higher the level of

education, the less dependent on the government is what "the new york times" put together. hello, george. the morning. caller: there are two different stands to this story. the single mother house told the people of been focusing on, where there is this breakdown in the family, but the other part that is being ignored is the increase in financial freedom of there the reason being increased education. i am a recent college graduate. my university 51% were female. in a competitive field they are attributed the same level. is leading to a new family dynamic where the woman can be the top earner and

the father can take a different role. that story was not being touched on as much by the callers this morning, but if you look at the generation in college right now the trend will be towards more families where the woman is the top earner. future,ears into the what women are being accused of in college now, there opportunities earlier in life will translate over the next 20 years. host: in other news, michele bachmann announced on her web site this morning that she will not seek reelection in 2014 for her house seat. here is a bit of the video that she posted on her web site. [video clip] next year iriends, will not seek a congressional turned to represent the wonderful people of the sixth

district of minnesota. after serious consideration i am confident that this is the right decision. for some a single term is an of service, for others to decades in the house is still not enough service. our constitution allows for the decision to be determined by the congress people themselves or by the voters in the district. however, the law limits anyone from serving as president of the united states for more than eight years and in my opinion, eight years is also long enough for an individual to serve as a representative for a specific congressional district. my decision was not in any way overenced by any concerns my being reelected in congress. >> she also said in the video that the decision was not impacted in any way by the recent inquiries into the activities of her former presidential campaign. in january a former michele

bachmann aide claimed that she made improper payments to an ohio state senator. the aide also accused her of other sec violations. this from an associated press story this morning from michele bachmann not seeking reelection in minnesota. and from overseas, these are headlines from "the baltimore sun." "proxy war tensions rise in the west as a rush of arms transfers in that country." from "the washington post," front page story, "syrian rebels warned hezbollah to end , saying theyssad will chase their fighters to help if they do not withdraw." "russia sends air missiles to

assad." "fragmented opposition puts the geneva peace talks at risk." those talks were brokered by secretary of state john kerry, hoping to take place in june. from "the washington post," "restraint urged on arms restraint being urged in arming the rebels seeking to oust the syrian president." here is "the wall street journal." "russia and the european union raise the ante on suits -- on syrian peace talks." this is from "the new york times."

"rockets and gun attacks raise fears of syrian strife reaching lebanon." back to our topic this morning, a research poll showed that mothers are the primary earners in four out of 10 households. caller: i cannot agree with a lot of statistics, but"rockets e same time, do not assert them completely. i am an african-american who was raised in a single-family household setting with my great grandparents. my mother did not raise me. but i have examples, role models, a community that surrounded me and when it came time for me to raise my own child i really had to reach out to those resources. host: let me stop you there. what types of resources did you have to seek out? caller: i had to get my education. my grandparents were very strong on me getting that education. i went to catholic school,

graduated from fordham university and then hunter college, becoming a teacher, so somei had my son i had resources set for me in terms of my skills and abilities. i had to reach out for him in terms of the extracurricular events going on in the neighborhood. i joined the community board, joined other parent associations to get access on the teacher's salary. i could not afford to send him to a private setting. i taught him and gave him extra resources at home. he did fabulously at a boarding school. i do not think that would have occurred as a single-parent without reaching out to the available opportunities that were around me. did have to have the skills to know how to find those resources and have the confidence to go out and seek

those resources. that is not always the case for the statistics you're talking about for african-americans and latino head of household females. that is not always the example. my grandparents were married. i saw that. i haveh i was single, those other examples to look to to know what would be required by the mother and father to set those standards and use those resources to get my son in a situation where those standards could be applied and he could excel at the foundation. >> let's move on. -- host: let's move on. this from twitter -- host: inside of this research report, the characteristics of married mothers who out earn their husbands are highly educated, nearly half have a

college degree or higher. the share is significantly higher among women who have husbands who are the primary breadwinner -- breadwinners or make the same level of income. , marriedrried earners mothers who make more -- mary black mothers are more likely to be the primary breadwinner than husbands who have a higher income. compared to 6% where the husband is the primary breadwinner. ofo, the characteristics single mothers inside the whole -- poll are made of a single groups. mothersrs consist of whose spouses are now living in the household. the shares have increased from

less than 1% to 11%. the share of mothers who are divorced, separated, or widowed increase in the 1960's and 1970's, remaining relatively stable in the 1980's, covering 12% in the last few decades. the research center report put out yesterday late last night, if you are interested go to our website and go to depew research web site as well. you can find the graphics and all the numbers, quite an extensive report. newport richie, florida, hello. caller: thank you for this topic. i have been thinking about it for the last couple of weeks. i saw peter do a segment with melanie phillips on the books that she wrote. one of the books that she wrote -- forgive me, i did not write- ups down, but she talked about

this at length and how it works here in america, but mostly in the u.k.. my mother has three degrees of. i am in my 50's. followingngle child her through that process. was she a single mom? caller: she was. my parents divorced when i was about five. my grandparents had a big hand in helping to raise me. basically i would see her about six months for every year and i would spend the rest of the year with my father. he was highly educated. he was on his fourth marriage and never had any other children. i am an only child whose parents were married a total of eight times. my kids say that i should write

a book. i have been married to the same man for 35 years. we have three college-educated children. i have been babysitting for my grandson and am very concerned about this country with regards to this topic. when you left at the report and the statistics, i would like to tell every young lady that just because you have an education -- and i have some college, so seeing my parents, i wanted to make sure that my foundation, my husband and family, was the first priority. mother andg about a father sticking together and having a family. we did everything with our children that we could and it paid off. it does pay off. my husband is a plumber. $50,000, one-year i think he made over $100,000.

we have struggled, but it has paid off. we have a son with a master's psychology, his own business in tampa. my daughter teaches fifth grade, she is a college-educated lady. the other one works for a multi- international company and he is working on his master's and just put his wife through the program. host: we are going to leave it there and show the rest of the viewers some economic headlines this morning as we wrap up this conversation. this is from "steel plant the journal constitution." and on the front page of "the financial times," two headlines right next to each other. "u.s. steps up housing recovery pace." next to that, "europe hopes to break free from austerity measures." lots of debates in this town and across the country about

stimulus for the austerity. today"nt page of "usa this morning, "bull run gets solid footing." in the stock market over 2009." washingtonm "the times." they have this about the housing market. "consumers gain back confidence ."om jobs and housing this story, prosecutors say the underworld banks discovered the biggest money-laundering scheme in u.s. history, prosecutors are charged with what amounted to an on-line underworld bank that handled $6 billion "for drug dealers, job pornographers, i-'80s, and other criminals

around the globe. also out of the supreme court, this headline from "the washington times." "the supreme court declined to hear an indiana case on thursday involving states that had laws that funded organizations for abortions." this is from mike pence, "i continue to feel strongly that taxpayers should not be required to support the largest abortion provider in america." jerry, ports mouth, rhode island. hello, gerry. your thoughts? caller: boys being raised without fathers, single-family households, i married a gal and

had two boys and did the best i could to try to raise them, but there is a lack of discipline from not having a father figure. i feel that it is important to society and that is why we have a lot of juvenile delinquency and drug problems, so on and so forth. my father raised 11 children, working his whole life. i would get out of hand as a young man and he told me off. today that does not happen as much. host: what about the lack of resources? monday, things like that? caller: my father had a loving relationship with my mother. beach,d take us to the we would ride in the station wagon. i think there is not enough of that in the relationship. resources are important.

two people getting together to try to make the best of what they have is important. host: that does it for that discussion, coming up next we will turn our attention to suburban poverty in america with elizabeth kneebone of the brookings institution. later at it -- later a report is out on the packing of u.s. weapons institutions by the chinese. we will be right back. ♪ [video clip] realances cleveland was a fashion icon. women emulated her hair style, her clothing. she popularize everything she had ended. distresses from the second administration and in a way this

is the most prized piece of all. this was her inaugural down from 1893. it stayed in her family and became a family wedding dress, used by her granddaughters. even her everyday clothes were very stylish. a lot of them look like something you could wear now. this is a jacket. a beautiful bolero jacket, black with a beautiful purple blue velvet. this is a more even inappropriate piece. a bodice with a matching skirt. sequins, nothing, beating. slightly more ornate daytime fast. this would have a matching caller. again, you can wear this with a shirt waist and skirt. is nowconversation available on our website, c- span.org/firstladies.

and i and next monday for a discussion of carol and harrison -- tune in next monday for a discussion on caroline harrison. [video clip] >> whenever one german where regiment wermacht fought another american regiment, the germans tend to be tactically superior. that they were the better military. but i think this is just nonsense. it is pointless. global war is a clash of systems. which system can produce the wherewithal to project power in the atlantic's, pacific, indian ocean, southeast asia. which system can produce the civilian leadership to create the transportation systems.

the civilian leadership that is able to produce 96,000 airplanes in 1944. >> sunday, journalist and historian rick atkinson will take your calls, facebook comments, and twitter messages, and that, live, on both tv on c- span 2. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we are back with elizabeth reporte, co-author of a confronting suburban poverty in america. " called itrk times cul-de-sac poverty. guest: in this research we're looking across the 100 largest metro areas. we think of the official metropolitan statistical area definitions from the census bureau and from the office of management and budget, within these regions we identify the

primary sear it -- primary cities, which can be the first in the area, or any other name city with a population of 100,000 or more. those become the city or urban portion within the analysis and in the suburbs are everything outside the boundaries. host: you found that everything from 2000 to 2011, suburban poor grew by 60%, double the rate of the cities, which was 29%. and that by 2010 one-third of the suburban poor lived in distressed neighborhoods. how do you define poverty? the officialg federal policy -- federal poverty guidelines. official using the federal policy guidelines. host: what does that mean for poverty? are you measuring what they have access to?

guest: this is a gross income measure. it was in place for decades. that is the benefit, we can look back at local level areas and look back for decades. but there are a lot of limitations to this. if you are in the bay area, alabama, chicago or boston, it is the same. host: it does not take into consideration cost of living? guest: it does not. it does not take into pretax income, or the benefits you may be receiving from government programs. what other reasons you are seeing a rise in poverty in suburban areas? guest: there are a number of factors that shape these trends. it may become low-income families and residents are moving into these communities or

because longer-term residents are slipping down the ladder. generally it is a combination of those factors. host: immigration? the population is growing faster in the suburbs. immigrants are increasingly coming into the country and by passing cities altogether and locating in suburban communities. this might be because they are following where affordable housing in the region is. jobs have shifted out words in it -- major metropolitan areas. we have seen low-income residents follow. host: on housing, is this a public policy decision made on the state level to put more housing options, housing vouchers, public aid housing out in the suburbs rather than the city? guest: it is a combination of factors. we do have these vouchers in

suburban communities. half of the residents are living in voucher households in the suburbs. but housing, affordable housing in general, has aged over time and become more affordable. we also saw the impact of the foreclosure crisis. two-thirds of the nation's foreclosures happened in those suburban communities. that has an impact on these trends as well. host: unemployment? caller: the most recent recession had widespread unemployment with record levels of poverty. was at in some ways it suburban letdown given the to bourbon -- given the collapse of the housing market and the unemployment rate rising faster beginning after years of downturn in the suburban community. this is a region-wide recession having an impact more than the last recession.

host: what is the implication for schools? you have some numbers about the percentage changes in low-income students attending schools in the cities and the suburbs. host: that is right. with the free and reduced price lunch population, but that trend onerowing faster than the in urban communities. often in our research we visited different regions with schools on the front lines in suburbs where the safety net may be stretched thinner, there may not be the same services readily available in a community, but schools are often the first stop for families looking for help, schools are often struggling with a growing population and looking for ways to create wraparound says -- rapport -- wraparound services. what did you find about transit?

it tends to be: less present in court -- suburban communities to begin with. residents who do have access in the suburbs often access to much it can be very difficult to hold employment in the suburbs using this transit. host: are there fewer jobs in the suburbs as opposed to the city? they are having trouble accessing? guest: most of our major metro areas have seen jobs to centralize and become more suburban. the challenge is often the jobs are growing in a part of the region where the low-income population is not. there may be bigger mismatches between low-income residents as they become more suburban, so it is that even a matter of going from the cities to the suburbs or vice versa. increasingly those of the

connections that transit is not that great at making in major of our areas. host: here is the rapid rise of according the suburbs to your report. you can see the rise happening around 2000, where there started to be more poor in suburbs as opposed to cities. what happened? guest: this is an important point, we have seen low-income populations growing at faster rates in the suburbs since the 1980's, but it has increased over the decades and that has passed this tipping point. well before the great recession. the recession exacerbated the trend where we saw poverty growth at record levels in terms of people living below the federal poverty line. this was already something on pace to shift. host: why was it happening?

guest: for a number of the reasons that we talked about. the suburbs became more diverse regarding housing patterns. then there was the economy. we had two downturns over the last decade. beyond the up and down of the economic cycle we have structural changes taking place where the jobs the group fastest were the ones that paid lower wages. as these shift over time we have seen it rippled through and play out within the populations of the region. host: in the report you're right that the amount of federal money spent to combat poverty, $82 billion, based on geography, across 10 different agencies. is this money well spent? guest: this is $82 million in place face hypocrisy programs, going towards improving

neighborhoods and delivering services or opening up opportunities, like healthy choice options. the issue with these is that they have been built up over decades and are very fragmented. often there is not much coordination amongst them. many of these were designed with distressed inner-city neighborhoods in mind. these are communities that continue to struggle but these programs often do not adapt well to the landscape of poverty, so it creates additional challenges and barriers. host: here is a look at the inside of this report. if your interested in this, go to the brookings website, or confrontingsuburbanpoverty.org. you can get inside of these numbers about combating poverty

guest: that's right. host: talk more about state involvement. these are the federal programs, but what happens on the state level? guest: we focus on the federal programs because the infrastructure, $82 billion is a significant investment, and it often shapes how the state and local dollars follow as well. many times, states are the ones administering some of these programs. so really we start with the federal, because it helps to dictate the way the dollars flow. there are steps that states can make too to help the dollars flow in more flexible ways that were better for regions in the cities and suburbs.. host: we're talking with elizabeth kneebone. twitter --

question,the first what we have seen across our 100 largest metro areas is the foreign-born population contributed 17% of the growth. so the bulk of the growth we have seen, over 80% of the poor people were native-born residents. of moving from the city, that's a difficult number to trace, because we don't have data that gives us a long tube. we get a snapshot each year through the census. we do know in some regions that plays a bigger role than others. some housing markets have developed more in other areas. housing prices have gone up. it has created a push factor for families to move further out in the region to find affordable housing. that plays a role in certain key markets. erie,laura is up first in pennsylvania, republican. caller: good morning. what you said before on your segment regarding single female

headed households, you were saying the ones receiving benefits was much higher for people who don't have high- school diplomas. further up as you get more educated, those people will not be in poverty and will need all the government assistance. i wonder if this young lady in her studies showed exactly how many were in non-married households that were in the suburban areas. i think poverty across-the-board needs to be addressed with regard to marriage. marriage dropped the probability of being the party by over 80%. the u.s. census bureau says that. people coming from two-parent households, the children are less likely to be involved in criminal behavior, less likely to have drug and alcohol abuse, less likely to drop out of school. why are we not piecing all this

together and encouraging marriage in the tax code and also fatherhood initiatives. president obama said something about responsibility at one of the graduation speeches. he does a good job as a role model. i think we need to address this, to incentivize marriage and keeping people not involved to get into a party to begin wicked. host: ok. very similarsee numbers across cities and suburbs. among the poor families in suburbs, there's a slightly higher share that are married households. but we do see single-parent households making up a larger share. non-familye single residences as well. we have seen the shares that are married decline over time. so there are a number of elements that intersect with this in particular as we think

about young children living in poverty. host: this tweet -- guest: there are a number of recommendations, models of promising strategies we have seen in place across the country that focus on the idea that regardless of where you live, city or suburb, how do we make the kind of connections to opportunities that help people out of poverty, in terms of education and training, also in terms of the kind of jobs that pay better wages, and helped families able to get above the poverty line. there's such an array of policy areas that need to be tackled at a regional level to make it work better for city and suburban residents alike. host: have been considered what the first caller said, having two parents and tax policy and

other policy that incentivizes having two parents in the house? guest: this is absolutely right. two parent households, the likelihood of being in property and having children and property declines if quite significantly. in terms of the initiatives that can help, there are a number of elements in the tax code that tried to support marriage. even if we look to are tax credits that support working families like the earned income tax credit, they have put in place marriage penalty relief so that you are not penalized for filing jointly as a married households and still able to access benefits important for your children and your family. in terms of what was expressed, it also comes to being able to improve our education system, get people to finish high school, put off childbirth until after they have a high-school degree, until they're married, and creating job opportunities that allow them to do that is important for that.

host: marine, democrats in minnesota. c-- marie. caller: right now what we are dealing with in the united states is class warfare. it seems to me like the people who have the money and power, they don't want to help people right now that don't have it. we cannot depend on the government. that is not our system. our system is a free enterprise. host: elizabeth kneebone? guest: in terms of the government, the government cannot do this alone. there's not enough resources in the pool of money we have today to begin to tackle the scale of this problem. however there are significant investors in the system we have built over decades. it is important to have them bleeding and participating in breaking down the barriers that help communities better access to funds we do have. more than anything, we will need cross sector partnerships that

link non-profit and philanthropic sources with business and private sector interests to be able to create these kind of connections we are talking about that not only help low-income families get past the safety net needs but look long term towards what is the path out of poverty. that is sporting connections across jurisdictional lines to be able to accept employment and education opportunities. host: on twitter -- we have seen the middle- class it declined in terms of size. weeks in the typical household income fall even before the recession. there's rising inequality in the country. increasingng concentrations of poverty once again although we have made progress against that in the --90's prepare our larger --

there are larger structural policy problems. we need to start thinking more comprehensively about the range of challenges today. host: in maine, independent caller chris. caller: good morning. i wanted to say that me and my wife have three children. i'm really glad you guys have this topic on c-span. have been living here approximately three months. you talk about the housing choice voucher. city.ear a familiesas, those are trying to take our children and families from the city to the suburbs is because of drug and alcohol abuse. educated ande everything else, but that does not mean we can go out and find our resources for higher

education or anything, because we don't have is stable home to live in. i have been waiting for house choice voucher. it's gone to be a three-year wait. we have tried every avenue we can think of. we have three children, like i said. vouchers andhoice the programs that you guys say are in place are not really a place, because they don't promise action soon enough so we can build our families up higher. host: produce a living falls is a suburb of louis, maine. it chose to move from the city to that area? caller: i have always been in the suburbs. i choose not to live in the cities because i think the especiallye city plays, if you have a low income, you move into the city areas that have more drug and alcohol

abuse. i choose not to put my children in a situation like that read they have to go to school and deal with those everyday issues of trying to at least produce a good life. host: what is the education like for your kids? caller: my children are all young. i have a 12-year-old, 10-year- old, and 7-year-old. they're all in school. i think that in the suburban areas schools have a chance to be more one-on-one with children. i have lived in a city and suburbs. suburbs, the teachers, the schools themselves have a lot more chance to be more in communication with the children, because it is a less population. that's why i choose to live away from the city's. host: but we ask you to respond to this tweet --

caller: no. the population of these that are using vouchers and things, like i said in the city there's much more population, so you will see that more in the city areas. in the suburbs there are just as many people looking for a way out, a way to be settled and get a higher education, a way to produce a better life. but you just don't see it as much because it's more widespread. it's not in such a confined area. host: elizabeth, your reaction? guest: i think he made a lot of very important points. just how important stable housing is, so you have that basic platform from which to think about what schools you send your kids to, what jobs are

nearby, or services you can connect to. these things are layered on top of each other. finding lot of people themselves in more opportunity- rich areas, but many are not. they're ending up in low-income areas that may not have as many jobs as neighboring suburbs or access to transit. it may be that they're looking for safer communities, better schools for their kids, but they have been limited in the other kinds of opportunities that and put them in a more stable economic footing. when we talk about suburbs, we tend to think of one kind of place, with suburbs are perverse. the experience of property in these communities and the resources they can bring to bear on these challenges vary. where you live matters in terms of what access to opportunity you have. host: we are talking about what the new york times called cul- de-sac property, with elizabeth

kneebone, the co-author of a report confronting suburban property in america. inside the report, here are the numbers. where the poor people with, 16.4 million in suburbia. on twitter -- guest: there are definitely structural changes that have helped shape these numbers over time. we mentioned the number of jobs that we see it growing fastest in recent years are ones that pay low wages. these are occupations in the service industry that maybe you're getting a typical wage of $20,000 a year, which would not be enough to keep a family above the poverty line even if you are working full-time. there are structural changes we have seen especially if you look at the shift away from manufacturing in many of our manufacturing-oriented metro

areas. sopa jobs now tend to be lower jobsg = = so -- so the available now tend to be low- paying. host: now a caller in new york, democrat. caller: i'm calling on everything that's happening. they are saying how it's not the government, but they are not understanding it takes legislators to pass bills because positive things to happen. they have to concentrate better, the legislature to get better solutions to end poverty. jobs,rease, by creating that helps african-americans, minorities, low-level people. host: we've got your point. a reminder, you got to turn the tv down when it's your time to talk, otherwise we get feedback

and it's confusing. elizabeth kneebone, your reaction? guest: there are recommendations which we have put out in the the at different points show there are choices that congress and state and local policy makers could make two help pave the way for smarter, more efficient solutions. -- to help. we have a strained budget and cuts are being made in real time to address these issues. if we don't do that in an intentional way, we risk creating the same sorts of problems in the suburbs if we have been dealing with in cities for decades. it should be an urgent call to action to rethink the framework and how we are deploying sources to address party so that we are reaching more people in places with limited resources we have. host: michigan, independent, len. michigan, about

3 miles south of an arbor, by the university of michigan. host: ok. gretchen,od morning, and c-span, and elizabeth from the brookings institute. conversations that i am listening to are pretty much basically the nation, the united states. it is happening everywhere and it is being categorized with single parents or divorced parents or married parents. we have had property since the early depression. as your previous caller said, a lot of it has to do with the institutions that are setting up these legislations. more and more, this budget was $60 billion and there are 80 different agencies. within that the agency, how

about the american institute seeing what payroll is, the retirement for all of these employees, and how much money is being spent there first before even gets to the public? i think the legislation needs to shrink the government or to combine things, because it just does not work. it is going down and down. it is like the old poker game at a person's home. the house takes a cut. our government is the cut. every time something is played, the government gets more and more. host: elizabeth kneebone? guest: one of the talent is of having a fragmented system like suburbs themselves into be quite fragmented. there are overlaps and inefficiencies that we're missing out on because of the fragmentation. newer efforts in

trying to blend dollars from the federal level on down more flexibly, to use them across more than one jurisdiction. i think that's a very promising model and the way to move forward, because we see cost savings with the dollars stretched further to help more places and have better outcomes at the end of the process. thee steps we can take in short term and long term to reduce the kind of fragmentation that would help make these resources stretched further. host: the cul-de-sac property headline that the new york times used, they put it on a piece written by you, a co-author of this report, on may 20, 2013, if you are interested in reading what the elizabeth kneebone put together, based on this report from brookings. next, maryland, independent caller charlene. caller: good morning. i am a suburban unemployed single mother. i was married and am now divorced with two kids, 12 and

14. i have a college degree. i put myself through school. 16.4 million people. i am a suburban mom living in bowie, maryland. i believe the work force investment act requires states to give training to unemployed people. that is what i'm doing. i lost my job in december. i went to the unemployment office and got my unemployment checks, food stamps, had to go through the system. then i decided i would take this time while searching for jobs to try to get some better skill sets to make me more able to get a higher-paying job. i may be a little different than some other unemployed people in that i have a college degree, but anyone who goes to their unemployment office can get training in their state, in any state. that training can then make them more eligible to get a higher-

paying job. so there are things currently in place that enable people to change their socio-economic status. host: elizabeth kneebone? guest: i think those sorts of programs are incredibly important, and exactly the kind of things we're talking about in terms of allowing people to get the training and access to the type of opportunities that would help them better their family situation, their own economic standing. the challenge we see in suburban communities is we have a diverse array of places. the services may not be as readily accessible or available and may require much greater distances in terms of traveling to get to what is available. we also find residents have some barriers in terms of even knowing what's out there and available to help them. overcoming the informational and distance carriers are important in the suburban context. host: inside this book, you can find the highest and lowest suburban property rates based on 2010 numbers.

the highest suburban property rate is el paso, texas. chris in louisiana in jonesboro, independence. to say theust wanted middle class has been eroding pretty good for many decades, as your guest noted. it is also important to notice that at the same time it the upper 1% at or upper 5% of the top income earners have grown their wealth manyfold over. so i believe this has been going on for a long time. the end game is to strangle the middle-class, to make all of us more dependent on big brother. host: and this --

anything you have heard from the caller? guest: it underscores we have seen rising inequality and that creates challenges in terms of having a robust middle-class. what iselpful for -- helpful for those residents to situationore stable did this is a shift where we have seen a decline in middle- class households. it is something we should be concerned with and are looking for ways to reverse it, because it is healthier overall. host: on twitter at -- we seeagain, when growth in the poor population across the metro areas, a lot of it has to do with the regional economy and its health and how

it is structured can affect these trends over time in the long term, as we saw with the two recessions in the last decade and with the economic structural changes over many years. but it's also in terms of where people are living, things that can shape that are where the jobs are moving within the region, what kind of jobs are available in these communities, and where affordable housing is, and where people can afford to live in these regions, and looking more broadly at population trends in these areas. host: what kind of jobs are there in the suburbs? guest: many of our jobs in these regions, the talk of them are in suburban communities. any range of kinds of employment. certain industries are even more suburbanized than others. things like construction or retail and services, which are lower paying jobs often. we also see manufacturing is becoming more suburban paris that was an industry hit hard over the last decade with job losses.

our economy is increasingly suburban, but lower income jobs are even more suburbanized. host: dale in vermont, a democrat. gayle.- caller: i'm calling from piedmont appeal year, vermont. i am married. my husband and i both have degrees in higher education. myself in social services and he is an attorney. he left yesterday for chicago to try to find work. we moved to vermont from milwaukee, and wisconsin. i lived in the university area and the violence and drugs are very evident. i have three daughters and did not want them to have to experience that. being here eight years has been great for them. they're both musicians and both have scholarships to university.

i have one daughter back in milwaukee at university. the problem here is that, you mentioned transit, there is none. eastmoreland peel you -- east rural.ier is essentially the problem is there are either very high paying jobs or very low-paying jobs here. i have been told many times that i am overqualified, so i cannot get even a low-paying job. i'm overqualified, too much education. host: is that a trend you have studied? guest: we have definitely seen the transit issue. this is such a critical challenge for so many families living in suburban communities, particularly families who cannot afford a car or a reliable car that can help them get to where

the job opportunities are in the region. in terms of the skills mismatch, that's a challenge that several communities are facing and makes it all the more important when we think about job attraction strategies or retention strategies within regions, how diversified economy that these regions are building, and what are the training options available for workers who now find themselves in that gap, and education and skills but perhaps need additional training to connect to the top opportunities that are there, in addition to the transit that might help them access to jobs. host: on twitter -- guest: the definition of poverty is a baseline question and it's a fair question in terms of how to define this. as we have seen, the census bureau has created a supplemental property measure which is much more nuanced than the one we are using, the base line you're using. it addresses things like differences in the cost of

living. four, ifor family of you and the suburbs of connecticut or the bay area or new york city, that's a very different standard of living t han someplace where the cost of living is lower. we do have the supplemental measure that has been developed, which takes into account differences in cost of living and taxes, benefits people may be receiving that helps them that are not currently reflected in this federal property measure, the traditional measure. the problem is it is not available for small area places. so it's difficult to get a more nuanced stuff and it's only been around a few years, so it does not give us a long look. any measure where you are just on the line, there are drawbacks. this at least gives us a standard benchmarks to see how communities have been fearing for decades. host: and this -- guest: wage levels are definitely an issue. a number of jobs are being

created that pay low wages that even if you are working full time would not be enough to lift you above the poverty line. this can come back to and human capital issued and the ability to have jobs that we are attracting different regions because we have a qualified and dedicated worker base that gets better match is between skills and jobs that pay more over the long term. host: westchester cross ,ppellan -- from westchester pennsylvania, bill. caller: i am a native washingtonian and have watched the city gentrify over the last 25 years. and out lighter in the statistics might be the fact that higher income people have moved to the inner city. i'm speaking of washington, d.c. a lot of theg out low-income people. the a high income people by the houses, renovate them, the

property value skyrockets. they also expect the police to clean up the neighborhoods. in the d.c. area, a lot of the folks that used to be in the city have moved out, a lot of the poor folks. that might be an outsider in the statistics as far as what is driving those statistics. host: elizabeth kneebone? guest: we see in certain markets the redevelopment of urban neighborhoods, the rising house prices can create a push income that some low- residents living in the city are now looking further out for more available and affordable options. it's not the case in every region. in a place like d.c., new york, san francisco, where the housing market are tight, like seattle, that is an element at play. with the rapid pace of growth and magnitude of growth we have seen and the ship we have experienced across these major

regions, the driving factor, although it's one elements at play. host: 80 in trenton, new jersey, independent. , thanks for taking my call. what it comes down to a, a property, there's only one real way to get rid of property and that is jobs. living in trenton, i am 50 years old and i have seen this area change 100% over the past 30 years. all manufacturing jobs in this area are gone. i hear people talk about higher education. that's fine for most, but there's a lot of people out there that they are just not college material. are better for manufacturing jobs or things like that. about crime and other things. people are working, their hands

are busy, so they don't have time to get involved with crime and drugs. it's always going to be there. we will never get rid of it. if people are working eight hours a day, it would keep them off the streets and potentially alex trebek. not only that. it is so much better for family cohesion. most divorces occur over financial problems. job and does not have a has three kids and cannot support them, a lot of times it throws up his hands and runs away. the holding centers around jobs. i see across the bottom of your screen occasionally that coming up is a talk about the chinese hacking on u.s. military secrets or whatever. people don't realize -- i look at it like lobsters. the american public, if you put a lobster in a cold pot and slowly turn up the heat, it will close every time. if you put them in a hot spot,

they will jump out. people don't realize they're being slow cooked. all the jobs in this country are moving out and not coming back. host: let's take that last statement, eddie. are the jobs going overseas? guest: that goes back to the structural changes we have been talking about, globalization and the decline in manufacturing, that it is a challenge for regions as they see jobs that pay well go away. ones that are coming back are paying less. raises challenges for how to create the kind of connections to people and jobs that give them a path out of poverty. i think we do see promising signs in terms of the rise of high school manufacturing. a caller is right. these are jobs their community colleges could play a role. or certifications where it's not necessarily a four year degree

that you could get financial security for your family. as economies transition and address the structural changes, how can we create those kind of connections to a more productive sectors that can help middle and low wage families. host: if you are interested in this topic, we will cover it more, an event sponsored by the national archives in day-lewis with a panel of local historians to discuss poverty in america. go to c-span.org for more details. elizabeth kneebone, co-author of "confronting suburban property in america". atzabeth kneebone, a fellow the brookings institute. thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me. coming up, we will talk about the new report on hacking of the u.s. weapons system by the chinese. dan goure of the lexington institute will join us to talk about that.

later, this week we will take a look at the cost of mental health and mental health policy. the mother jones front cover story by mac mcclelland. she will be our guest about that issue. first a news update from c-span radio. corrected 8:34 eastern. some international news. pakistani intelligence officials say a u.s. drone strikes has killed the the north two commander of a pakistani taliban. say heakistani officials was among a for your people killed in the strike this morning in a tribal region near the border with afghanistan. the militant group denies that he's dead, but the of the officials say that their informants in the field and seen his body. say.o of the officials regarding hacking, says it wants to work with washington to counter such activities. this also claims that the country access data from nearly 40 u.s. weapons programs and

other defense technologies. the chinese assistant foreign minister today did not directly address the allegations? but he did say that china opposes all hacking and referred to an agreement with the u.s. to form a cyber crime working groups. new international sanctions over north korea's nuclear weapons program are having unintended consequences. halting and transfers by foreign humanitarian groups working to help those most in need and forcing some agencies to carry suitcases of cash in from the outside. at the same time, some restrictions targeting the country's elite by curbing imports of electrical goods are not appearing to stop the high end living style in the capital p'yongyang. those are some of the latest headlines on c-span radio. [video clip] >> the public's fascination with frances cleveland extended to her clothing. she was a real fashion icon. women emulated her hairstyle and clothing.

she popularizer everything she had. this was a dress from the second administration. this is the most prized piece of all because this is the inaugural gala. this was from 1893. it stayed in her family and became a family wedding dress. this was used by her granddaughters. even her everyday clothing were very stylish. a lot of them looked like something you could wear now. at, a wonderful bolero jacket, black with beautiful purple and blue velvet. this is a more even inappropriate piece. haveis a bodice that would had a matching skirt. beautiful lace and sequins, beating, slightly more ornate daytime vest. this would have a matching collar. you can wear this with a shirtwaist and skirts.

>> our conversation on frances cleveland is available on our web site, c-span.org. programday for our next on first lady caroline harrison. monday.h >> "washington journal" continues. host: we welcome back to the table the vice president of the lexington institute. dan goure. the washington post had this yesterday on its front page -- what happened? guest: this is a report of a study done by the defense science board late last year. the classified report says china in particular has hacked into databases and provided them with key information on a host of major u.s. weapons systems, missile defense systems, ships, planes, and others. host: how? guest: we are not clear.

the report is available on the defense web site. it says the chinese are engaged in whichr blitzkrieg they are using a whole variety of means, getting it through e- mail, e-mail phishing, sending phony e-mails and using that to get into people's e-mail. using agents in place. using students or people they have been able to subvert. variousgoing through sub suppliers. on e-mailcommunicates and supply chain stuff electronically. they go in through one of these little companies and walked away all the way it up. host: what is the goal of the chinese and how many resources,

how much of their manpower, are they spending on trying to hack into the united states weapons systems? guest: if we take this as a whole, there's a number of different things they're going after. one is economic information data which will help their economy, designed for commercial systems, plans companies have for how they will sell their wares in china or global in. on the military side, there's to gain insight and knowledge about the technologies involved so they can reverse engineer. so china can leapfrog the process that may have taken the u.s. 20 years to get to a new weapon system. second, to understand their operational characteristics, how is this going to be used. if there is a war between the u.s. and china, they can understand how to defeat those systems and the tactics that go with them. third, possibly looking at ways of corrupting or subverting the systems themselves. for example, inserting malware or some other kind of virus into

the software. almost all of our systems are heavily software dependent for firing and some protest line. if you can put a little bug in the system you can turn on when you need to, an airplane may fall out of the sky. host: and resources the chinese are dedicating to this? used: it looks to be during national intelligence estimate recently suggested they had a massive campaign appeared there was a report in february that described a semi-official ,ntity, part of the military which were hundreds of people that had been doing this job for decades and were very skilled. as a result they had gotten from 140 of data organizations and companies, at least. host: so these are not traditional soldiers. guest: we're not even sure if they are uniform in that sense,

but they're part of the electronic warfare establishment of the chinese military. they're connected to the pla. host: in the washington post's story, here's an expanded partial list of dot system designs and technology is compromised -- how does this rate as far as an act by another country against the united states? guest: nations have always by upon one another. this is not necessarily all that different. there was a famous case in the soviet union days they put bugs into the walls of the embassy that we were building, the u.s. embassy in moscow. to the point where we had to abandon the building, it was so compromised. we do it all the time. scale andhere is the

the level of success, that long list of weapons systems. we're told that the weapons and not been compromised. we don't know exactly whether -- , god on any individual system, how deeply they penetrated. trouble is we may not always able to tell how well they did until something goes really wrong. host: you say that we are told these and not been compromised. press secretary from the pentagon had this statement, -- what are they going to do?

how's the pentagon going to combat this? guest: in a number of ways. it requires the defense companies do better and cyber security and maintaining security over their systems. many of the company's, if you go to them, lockheed martin, boeing, they're very good with internal cybersecurity systems. they are tracking trucks 247. are so good that they are now starting to bring these capabilities into the marketplace to help other companies that. are not so that the first half of the statement does not connect to the second half. we are doing all kinds of things to improve security and hire more people. that does not mean our systems have not been compromised up to this point and it does not mean they will not, going for it. we are in the midst of a real act of espionage war. host: that brings up the question of whether the act of the chinese was an act of war. in may of 2011, a story in the wall street journal --

guest: that is the next stages. we have already had about would call an act of war, the use of stuxnet against the iranian nuclear enrichment facility. a cyber virus was deployed against a physical system causing it damage. that fit the definition that the pentagon had or the military had. by the way, we now see that the iranians are reported to be trying to use cyber attack against u.s. and international pipelines and energy systems. we are in the beginning stages -- it's much like being in the 1930's are think the lead up to world war ii. new technologies, wars in unusual places, ethiopia, spain,

we are going there. host: the specific action we're learning about from this report, does it rise to the level of an act of war? guest: i don't think so. as is traditional espionage, using the means available. hopefully, using the exact same thing. host: this on twitter -- guest: let's be careful of our terms. espionage is not an attack. ,e are very good at what we do i'm told, on the cyber side. there is cyber defense, cyber offense, protecting your networks, attacking other people's systems, and then there's all the espionage tools and techniques. i assume you're developing defensive skills. military is supposed to be defense and -- supposed to be developing offensive tools. and the intelligence community is up to their chin in working

cyber espionage. we would be crazy not to. host: on twitter -- guest: that the great question. if you go deep down into it, six levels, small companies, we're that go into the computers, military systems, they come from china. we have concerns that there are , things beinge hard wired onto the chips themselves, which is very difficult to detect. very hard to detect. you now have something coming from china. it's the person building the airplane has no visibility seven levels down as to read this part is coming from. they just need to make sure it is quality and it's properly tested. by the time you get all the way up in the system, unless you are examining every single stage of

the process, it could have been compromised five times. host: this from the washington post -- yes, that potentially right. at a minimum, we need to understand it -- they understand the limitations of the missile, so they would figure out tactics to make us vulnerable. aftery cases the missiles used for sensitive radar or infrared sensors. if you can figure out how it sees a target, you can build a countermeasure. and then we would be disarmed, literally. host: what is the cost of this type of cyber-espionage? loss is on the commercial side. it probably is in the many tens

of billions of dollars. possibly hundreds of billions of dollars in intellectual property that goes overseas. on the defense side, you have to rewrite the code, you have to resign the system, a standout the radio or radar, or the system will stay in combat, your talking about $1 trillion and cost. host: on twitter -- guest: there is that. a report by two members of congress that talks about the vulnerability of electric power grid. we have seen attempts to penetrate the electric power grid. even more basic than the banking system, take down power grid. this country and would go back

to the dark ages. host: silver spring, maryland, democrat nikki. caller: hi. i wonder if the guest believes the corporations played any role in this. in the state's main the a lot of the products we buy are made in china, so it puts them in a position to have these resources to use against us. i wonder if he thinks they have a role. guest: we're stuck at the moment. with a globalized economy. we go where the costs are low. while lot of stuff comes from china. the question for corporations is who is responsible for cybersecurity? do we put the military in charge of all of it? that would mean securing cybersecurity for yahoo! and google. bank, butmpany, your should they be made responsible? and what happens if they fail in

responsibility? what happens if a defense company loses critical data? we have not worked all this out in inappropriate ways. the division between homeland security, responsible for defense a homeland, and infrastructure, and d.o.t., with the nsa and cyber attack command for the military side. the problem is you don't have the resources, the manpower, sophistication on the department of homeland security side. they're loath to spend money on cybersecurity if they cannot show it really provides value. how much insurance? you buy for the one insurance even as a result, you get a tax. -- attacks. host: arlington, virginia, independent. caller: i'm in the technology business since 1996. you are trying to scare american people a little with this cybersecurity. the issue is american corporations by outsourcing our jobs give all the documents how

to produce goods to china. it's not like china needs to spy anymore. every country in the world does espionage. the european union is buying on the u.s., israel is spying on the u.s., we spy on china and other countries. when we have the u.s. outsourcing, manufacturing of u.s. computer systems to china, everything is done in china and singapore and other countries. we give them blueprints. they can produce. they don't need to check for more systems. that's the main issue. guest: it is used perhaps for commercial systems but not for military systems. to handspecial care not over the production blueprint for fighter planes and missile systems to the chinese. we try to check the pieces that go into the systems.

on the military side, and this is a very different threat, and the success they have had is dramatic and dangerous. host: and this -- having been a contractor at one time and having known a lot of them, if you get rid of contractors, you might as well close the door to the u.s. military, because they could not produce a thing. it's not clear to me that the government is more secure, their computers, then the contractors are. contractors do a lot of the work. if we know there are tens of thousands of attempted intrusions into government computers. ,e have had government individuals like the wikileaks case, bradley manning was a military person working for the government, not a contractor. so both sides have a problem. host: ralph in north carolina, a democrat. caller: good morning. put this the military

information on paper like it once was years ago instead of putting it on computers where it can easily be down loaded? guest: interesting question. we have gone to the use of computers because it is faster, cheaper in many cases. it is easier to store. you can store the entire library of congress probably in this room now if it is digitized. also because you can share information much better. because of computer aided design we now go from a design on a computer right to the manufacturers to the machine itself, and the machine starts spinning out a piece of hardware. in a sense, is the way we manufacture now. it is the way we design now. it is the way we do things like improve rugs, because we do it

with computer modeling. that revolution is part of the information technology revolution. we are stock. stuck. host: we heard that chinese officials say they oppose computer hacking and want to work with washington to counter such a activities following the new claims we're talking about here. it goes on to say china would like to refer to an agreement with the u.s. to form a cyber crime working group. what do you know about this? guest: the chinese have been saying nobody here but us innocent saints for many years even though there's published information. i've also talked to people working inside intelligence community and in the military who say without question the smoking guns are there, but the trouble is we don't want to make them public partly because we have techniques by which we want the and we don't

spies to know about our adversaries. byna has a problem attacking outsiders not part of the government. or people from the west hacking into chinese systems. so do we. there's a place for this kind of cyber crime. crime groups the fact wediminish are being inundated by government-directed military oriented chinese cyber spying. host: how does the u.s. response? guest: that is the tough question. you have to improve your defenses. the need to be operating 247. we need to be more vigilant. we need to have higher standards, resilience systems. the defense science board report that was the basis for a washington post report, about resilience military systems. we have to figure out ways of operating on the chinese to try to back into our system, ways of making the system hardened

against that, ways of ensuring that we detect intrusions or viruses are very early and can fix them, and also we need to consider at what stage and in what ways do be retaliates. and is a shot across the ball deterrence strategy? host: does president obama publicly raised this issue in front of the chinese president? guest: one of the problems with say lookedis you can at all these military systems and know how it's done and what it does produces the kind of thing that grabbing the chinese president by the throat to does not do as a lot of good. but it has to be raised. in past being clear in the public discussions that it was raised. i don't think one needs to browbeat the chinese leadership publicly in order to get a response. host: the new york times reports on that summit saying the two

will meet at an estate east of los angeles -- one analyst said he wants the american president to recognize that china is dramatically rising in military and economic ways and he wants the president to know that he is active in world diplomacy. if the american president recognizes all these things, and the chinese president can be nicer in his deposition in a very tense situation. ifst: one could assume that we capitulate, the chinese will be nice. if we resist, the chinese may get testy. on the other hand, and has enough of its own military and economic problems. it is not there yet. this is as much of chinese attempt to get great power bigtus on the cheap by a

ball of and the president would be sorely mistaken to get buffaloed by the chinese leadership. host: charles is on -- on the line. caller: you wish that a whole series of things in which they are essentially gathering information from our technologies. -- you listed. my question is why can we not load those technologies with some little false things so that when they copied these things and fly the first airplane it would not get off the ground before they launch a submarine and it goes to the bottom? we can loaded with false information and they would not know whether it is or not, so they don't know what to follow. i will take your answer off the air. guest: great question. people have suggested that. it may have been done. there have been recent stories

about computer programs to do turbine's back in the 1970's or 1980's that the russians were purchasing that were essentially loaded with viruses. the problem is you can do some of that, but we are seeing that they are going after the actual designers, developers, testers, and producers of the military systems. you cannot blow to everyone of our data bases with phony information without essentially causing ourselves of some problems. so there has been some for our own benefit. those are the systems the chinese are going after any those are the ones that we have not always adequately protected, apparently. host: this on twitter -- guest: great question. there are supposed to be hundreds of thousands of attempted intrusions on d.o.t.

computers every year. probably 95 or maybe 99% are trivial. some kids in omaha or wherever doing exactly that, one, two, 3, whatever. the problem is 1% is the problem is that one percent is still a fairly large number. and the pros are going after sites through multiple means day in, day out, week in, week out, and eventually things that through. one percent is enough to do terrible harm. host: we are talking to dan garay, vice president of the lexington institute, about the "tory in "the washington post yesterday. mark, macrina caller. -- democratic caller. caller: i have a comment -- " 60 minutes"

episode about espionage and they cut someone in the homeland trying to exchange secrets for cash and he got caught. you are talking about the actual hacking aspect from overseas but what about the physical lack of oversight that could lead to somebody compromising, whether it be a password or code or any type of material resource for that purpose of stealing it? we have a tremendous problem with poor security practices, people living passwords out on their desk, things like that, just bad hygiene in cyberspace, you can call it that. and then you have people who can be compromise. they can be foreigners in the united states to work, citizens or residents who are subverted -- it happens all the time. we had many cases through the cold war. the russians did it the old- fashioned way -- they supported people and both people carried off reams of information. in some cases they carried out

hardware. there was the famous story of the sidewinder missile in germany. somebody put it in the back of a bw and drove across the brandenburg gate and into checkpoint charlie and into the each -- east. we think it is still the new old fashion way and in the case of countries that are as sophisticated as russia, china, and the like, they may have to do it the old-fashioned way. avoid the one and not spend time on physical security. you've got to do both. host: independent in michigan. caller: mike rogers is my congressman, and for three years i've been trying to get into remove most-favored-nation status for the chinese communist government. but i don't understand is that we know they are hacking us, we know they are doing currency many galatian pit why is it that washington and and obama are still giving them economic deals through most-favored- nation status? . can't understand

when is washington going to stand up for the american worker and the american people and stop giving the communist chinese government special economic deals through most-favored- nation status? isn't that traitorous at a point? that's all i've got to say. thank you. guest: we trade with china because it is in our economic interest. even with the loss from the side of hacking, the scale still goes to -- in favor of trading with china. however, it cannot be, if you will, an open checkbook or open kimono. we have got to figure out a way of saying that this has to stop, and if it doesn't, there will be consequences. and think about what those consequences might be. it is hard to do it in a trade sense. you cannot impose a tariff on chinese imports, but it may require us to do some very

particular and argumentative things. you cannot expect this to be a one-shot where we and tack -- attack and opposes sanctions and the chinese capitulate. that may be part of what the discussion will be about. we don't have to -- we won't want to go this way, obama may say, but we may be forced to if you don't i let down. guest: not that i am aware of. they're still buying weapons" developing stuff with the russians, advanced stuff. there old russian aircraft carrier was supposed to be a casino that was supposed to -- that was bought by the chinese. they are getting better, though. partly because we are giving them the skills. commercial companies are giving

them advanced skills in aerospace and other things and because of what they are able to steal. it will come a day, not far in the future, where they will be essentially pretty much our equal. we will be fighting it out to the nail. >-- tooth and nail. host: how will we be fighting it out? will we really be fighting war against china? guest: the chinese are setting up -- the quotation you just havd -- a great power relationship. they are based on balances of power and military standoff. that is been the way going back centuries. they will develop military give abilities, we will develop military capabilities, and we keep going this way and that is a stable balance. you don't go to war if there is no gain from it and we need to make sure that the chinese recognize that point or 30 or 50 years down the road, there is no gain from a war. host: independent caller. caller: good morning.

you started the story in the middle, because it is actually corporations. back in the 1980s, once computers -- we got them on our desktops -- we invited people from all over the world to come and learn our technology. we created the engineering , and thenthe design they left. them for using their education against us. this is totally the corporations, and microsoft, hewlett-packard, all the technical companies for years, just for the fact that we have members in the united states who did not get an opportunity at all for those positions. host: dan goure? guest: there is a mixed here. we invited foreign educated graduate students and scientists to come into work.

the problem may be that we don't and off -- we don't offer enough of these people citizenship. we should welcome them here and make it so attractive that they wouldn't go back. the reality is that corporations do what is in their best interests and the interest of their shareholders and, frankly, reduce value that we all -- produce value that we all love and benefit from. that really can't be the answer to the problem. ofs is -- at the level espionage, this is a battle of nations -- that is, as old as the nationstate, and it has to be treated as such. we're simply simply doing it in a new domain. there's nothing new about the process itself. the computer all information they need at american university since the late 1970s. mr. goure, who is our greatest cyber adversary? guest: you know, that is an interesting question.

most of the reports identify four major players in terms of espionage. the chinese are number one. the russians are a close number two. very sophisticated but not in the same map. israel is identified as the third player, largely for economic advantage. and france, interestingly enough, is identified as the fourth major player, or at least sources in france. i don't mean that the national government level. , everybody wants to play in the big race has essentially major power ambitions who is looking for ways to jumpstart their economy. all of them are coming to the united states as it, you will, the cornucopia of technology and trying to steal it. anst: you know, that is interesting question. clearly al qaeda does not have a real reason to go after the design code for an 30. but if you are thinking about them trying to hack into missile

operations to mandate a base or some of the companies that are providing security for u.s. embassies and facilities overseas, clearly that would be something that al kato might be interested in, because if there ran is going after and hacking into our infrastructure, our energy infrastructure emma the energygrid, - infrastructure, the power grid, get a terrorist groups be far behind -- can the terrorist group be far behind? host: nikki, waverley, georgia, republican. caller: yes, good morning. i wanted to find out -- obama is was to meet with china because the contracts he just gave china for electric cars and buses and all that, the factors in california. that is what the discussion is about. ay would you outsource factory that could be gave to

the megan people instead of china billions of dollars -- could be gave to the american people instead of china billions of dollars? guest: we have had a long history of problems with countries or companies from countries coming in and buying up our capability. the businesses staying in the the u.s. but it is chinese- owned. a computer maker bought the ibm pc business. we are well into that. how we manage that and whether the jobs go overseas or the money comes here to create jobs in the united states is the real question. it is a tough problem, because the chinese have the money, they have the workforce, and increasingly the technology, and they have a huge market. a lot of companies would like to send their capabilities overseas and do production in china because they see the hope of capturing the chinese markets

as well as the markets back here. california,d in democratic caller, you are on the air. caller: the united states is one of the leaders of espionage. and if you think of espionage and drones, how can another country flyer drone into the united states and kill civilians? we do that all over the world. i think that way back when i was a little boy, a guy was shot u2 rocket over russia. it was a long time ago, but we are one of the leaders of espionage, i find. guest: we're not saying that the chinese are bad and we are good. everybody does espionage, no question about it. some some kind of espionage is actually very good. the fact that we have spy satellites, and so do the chinese and the russians, that look at the world and can detect military maneuvers or the

buildup for war, can be a very good thing. espionage goes on. we all do it. that was in the basis for the washington post article. what they were saying is that the chinese have had spectacular successes which may diminish u.s. security that was the key point. host: how did "the washington post" get this report? guest: the science board under dr. paul kaminski, former undersecretary of defense for acquisition, has been focused on cyber and network security since he took over. apparently the reporter got a hold of the confidential edition and i suspect there is a highly classified version, and that version, unlike the unclassified version, names names and identifies systems. host: names systems leaked by the administration?

guest: i'm hearing stories that this was leaked by the administration. in ministration might have some basis for saying, look, i'm getting public pressure here, and we have got to have some arrangement about your espionage. it is out of control. ist: the meeting dan goure referring to is the president, president obama meeting with his counterpart from china for a two-day summit in california. headline in "the new york times" is that the president is seeking a new power relationship. brent, go ahead. caller: good morning, mr. goure and greta. disagree with the previous caller said, are the chinese doing -- basically what the previous caller said, are the chinese doing anything with that we're not doing to them in terms of acting -- hacking computers? guest: i would hope that they're not doing more of us, i ha would hope that we have run riot through industrial computers. frankly, i would hope that we

are connecting economic espionage and stealing their secrets and that would at least put everybody on an equal field. what i do know, and despite multiple reports, multiple sources, is that we are being assaulted by the chinese and at the very least need to take defensive measures. i'm not talking about blame here. nobody is taking blame. this is just a fact. guest: that's a good question. we don't know in many cases where various groups fit in. one of the things about the internet is that not only do you take over someone's computer and service, and we know from the report that the chinese are -- and these military groups are buying up service and establishing domain names and are all over the place. they are just littering cyberspace with potential watch points for attacks. in some cases groups are on their own, and in other cases

they need to be subverted by .ations in some cases criminal groups are being paid -- we know that is happening with the russian nations. part of making this manageable is that it is very hard to know in all cases who you are dealing with and who is the real source. the washington post," if you go to the website comments video video of various weapons act into. -- has video of the race weapons hacked into. of the lexington institute, thank you for your time. guest: i appreciate it. host: coming up, our spotlight on magazines continues. we will look at mental health with mac mcclelland page she wrote a cover story for "mother jones." "schizophrenic, killer, my

cousin." first, a news update from c-span radio. >> politico reports that the justice department contacted your chiefs of major print and broadcast news organizations to set up a meeting with attorney general eric holder to discuss changes to the department's guidelines for subpoenas for news organizations. a source close to general holder says that in retrospect he regrets the breath and wording of the investigation involving fox's james rosen, which holder approved. it took in more phone lines than necessary. and where this hour that president obama plans to furman, aason harvard trained economist, to replace alan krueger as the head of the council of economic advisers. krueger plans to return to princeton university in time for

the next school year. thefurman had been on national economic council since january 2009. an update on minnesota congresswoman michele bachmann's decision not to run for reelection. she says that her decision has nothing to do with the recent accusations by the federal election commission of the violations in her presidential campaign. 'st the political playbook "facts of life" section says, " and they say it is not about the money, it is about the money, and when bachmann says it is not about the investigation or the competition, you can bet that they were both huge factors." those are some of the latest headlines on c-span radio. be a denigration of the u.s. military by some historians. whenever one german wehrmacht battalion or one regiment fought an american regiment, the germans tended to be tactically superior.

mano a mano, they were the better military. i think this is just nonsense, because it is pointless. global war is a clash of systems. it is which system can produce the wherewithal to project power in the atlantic, the pacific, the indian ocean, southeast asia. theh system can produce civilian leadership to create the transportation systems, the civilian leadership that is able to produce 96,000 airplanes in 1924? two-time pulitzer- winning author and journalist rick atkinson will take your calls and tweets. booktv noon eastern on on c-span2. >> "washington journal" continues. host: in our last hours on

wednesdays on "washington journal," our spotlight on magazine series. this week, the cover story in " mother jones." the author of that, mac mcclelland, is joining us from san francisco this morning. that's begin with something you wrote inside the article. in the 1950s, war than half a million people lived in u.s. mental institutions. that is one in 300 americans. "the motives behind this trend were varied, to say the least yurik." what was happening in the 1950s? guest: there was a lot

happening. when you talk about the motives, you have the fact that there were a lot of people in these hospitals, and a lot of people had noticed that the commissions were less than desirable, or deplorable and some cases. you had the patient's rights movement where people wanted to get people out of these institutions and not lock them in there forever. at the same time, is this expensive to have people in hospitals, and people did not want to keep paying for it. there was sort of a convenient convergence of doctors on the one hand saying there is another way that we could do this, we don't have the key people in these hospitals, and the republican governments, frankly, it on the other hand saying that's great we don't want to pay as much as it's costing anyway, so let's downsize this whole institution system. an insane costit of "abandoning troubled minds." give us an idea of your argument.

one, literallyr the cost of it. if you don't have people getting the health care that they need, you end up paying for their illness and other ways. for example, in california, the pioneer of the institutionalization, just a year after they passed the act that kicked deinstitutionalization here into effect, the number of mentally andinmates in prisons jails in california doubled pretty few are not paying for it in one place, you are paying for it somewhere else. nationally we see the records of just skyhigh numbers of mentally ill bill mates -- mentally ill inmates. they end up institutionalized anyway, and not just in terms of dollars -- you have the cost of lives that are lost, both on the part of people who end up lost in the system, and they end up committing crimes, and then they end up locked away, but also, they are victims, and

the people that they heard. for "inside the piece mother jones," there is a sideboard -- sidebar story, "crazy priorities." homicidestely 10% of are committed by untreated severely mentally ill people. between 1998 and 2006, the number of mentally ill people incarcerated in federal, state, and local prisons and jails more than quadrupled to 1.2 million ." here is the percentage of inmates with mental health problems as of 2004. total prisons, state prisons, local jails. prisons, state prisons, local jails. what is the impact of all of this on prisons versus having until institutions like they did in the 1950s? guest: basically, you still have people locked up, inns that -- except that instead of having the mockup and a facility that is meant to take care of their issues, you have them locked up

in prisons by corrections officers who are not trained to deal with and treat, obviously, mental illness, so you end up having a lot of problems. there are a lot of suicides of mentally ill and prison. there could be altercations with guards that end up getting hurt, sometimes people end up getting killed. the corrections officers have sort of become the de facto mental-health wardens, and that is not their job job and they don't have the training to do it. host: how much of the federal government spending on mental health? guest: well, not enough, actually. when they started this plan for the institutionalization, the idea was that if you get all these people out of institutions, you can give them help within the community centers. it would still have a place to go, they would still places where they could get help and

medication and get treatment and they could get therapy. for those mental-health centers never came around. in 1980, jimmy carter -- even in 1980 come of the funding was so subpar that they wrote this new act and signed into law they were going to step it up, that we had enough money to take care of all these people who had been -- hundreds of thousands of people we are talking about -- you had been dumped out of institutions and were not .etting care anymore but when reagan came into office, he totally gutted it. the money was never there, and for decades we have been scaling it back and back and back year- by-year. host: and where does the mental- health spending go? how does it breakdown? guest: for now it is mostly up to the states. you have almost all of the burden shifted to state and local governments. it depends on the state, what

state you are in, how much they spend. you have some states that spend $150 per capita on mental health care. you have some states in ohio come a which is where i was the county that cleveland .s in spends $.20 per person that is obviously an abysmal amount. it depends where you are. but in all -- and -- cases most of the money goes to drugs, loading people up on prescription drugs. his fiction drugs are an important part of people -- are -- prescription drugs are an important part of treatment for many people, but it is not the whole answer. obviously, they need a lot of other kinds of treatment and support. host: and you do a comparison in your piece, how the money was being spent and where it went in 1986 versus where it will go in 2014. you can see that prescription drugs is an brown, very little

spent on that. -- very little spent on that in 1986 compared to where it is suspended now. we're talking about the trend and changes over time, the breakdown of how the money is spent. guest: well, you can see that in the chart am at the money used to go to hospitals. most of the money was going to hospitals and keeping people not always -- again, it is not that hospitals were the great answer. in a lot of cases the conditions were terrible and people were not even trying to get them better. they were just sort of trying to keep them locked away. but in some cases people would go into hospitals and would have kind of a stent there and would get treatment and support and then they would get out. and then they would move on with their lives. now that is very rarely the case. it is very difficult to get into a hospital, because there aren't that many hospitals and as you , there is one bed per

more than 7000 americans. ,retty much your only option and where all the cash is going, is to get on drugs. if you want actual treatment, especially inpatient treatment, it is extremely difficult to come by. how itou talk about varies across the country and inside the piece you have a chart of the united states. states in blue are spending $75 or less are cap on mental health hit states in green, $76 to $105. states in red, $106 to $160. $161 or more on mental health. this is from the agency that oversees until health issues. what is that agency, what do they do? guest: well, it is aboard, basically, of the federal spending, and it is not just mental health.

we should say that it is also substance abuse treatment included in there because those issues are often come, tim. but there is the overseeing .oard i interviewed someone on the board for the piece, and they, like everybody else, say that we don't have nearly enough money to do what we need to do. people are just sort of falling through the cracks and we are ending up paying for it in different ways, so it is not cost-saving to not give them the resources that they need. and they know it and they've have known it for a long time. host: another chart in your piece -- "the true cost of abandoning the mentally ill." $12.3 cut a total of billion in their budget. these states have cut spending more than 20% -- south carolina, alabama, alaska, illinois,

nevada, california, and d.c. first phone call for mac mcclelland, chris in nashville, tennessee, independent caller. hi, chris. caller: i have a question that goes back to your previous guest, who is studying the urban poverty, and that coming into this guest with mac. i'm bipolar. i've had panic attacks my entire life. i've been hospitalized several times for these. i'm a professional hair stylist and nine at that time in my life when was making $75,000 a year and now i am completely unemployed because the public health care system in nashville, tennessee is almost impossible to manage. you can go into an office and they will tell you -- they will assign you to someplace that is so far away from your house that it is ridiculous to get there. it becomes almost impossible to itak down the system -- moves out of the cities and into urban areas and it is very frustrating just trying to

.avigate the system it's enough to actually make the problem worse. it's been my own experience for myself that i have to really stay on top of things to stay motivated to try to manage my mental health care. when things crumble or breakdown, i can't access the care and it creates a tumbling effect. and there are many millions of americans that are in this category where they have high earning potential but they can't make it because i have a fallen into these depressions and i can't check e-mail and i don't answer the phone, i'm not able to function like a normal person. that is all i have. thank you. host: mac mcclelland, your thoughts on what you heard from that caller. guest: unfortunately, that is not an uncommon story. one of the people that i interviewed here runs a community mental health center in the tenderloin, a neighborhood in san francisco that is 35 square blocks but has 6000 homeless people in it

on any given day. when i was talking to her, she said was to the people who come in here who are trying to get assistance, they have treatable mental illnesses that come in theory, if they had a little bit would beent, they fine. they wouldn't be in this downward spiral of you lose your jobs, you have to get on disability, you can't, there's is a delay, you end up homeless, you end up on a waiting list for inemergency shelter where san francisco that list is so long that they have shut it and they're not even taking names anymore. a little bit of money and treatment goes a long way in terms of saving money and sort of saving people from these downward spirals in the end. but they often can't get the support that they need, even when they have come in the case of the caller, something that is trader -- treatable and

manageable if you can get the necessary assistance. host: a tweet for you hear from one of our viewers. guest: where in the constitution? [laughs] it's a sort of a basic human right. it's a basic civil right to have access to medicine that somebody needs, isn't it? also, it's a matter of protecting people from themselves and from others. a lotount of crime that of people think, frankly, is predictable and preventable with people who are mentally ill, you know that they are in trouble, you know that they are in a bad thee, and you can see downward spiral happening and you try to get them help, you can't get them help come and we have seen this with very high-

profile cases lately, where the perpetrators of violent crimes, their families have seen warning signs and they try to get them assistance and they can't. in terms of getting those people the best quality of life and in terms of safety, this is for thessue not just people who are suffering but for everybody around them. in burlington, vermont, democratic caller. caller: good morning. through incame vermont, it wiped out our state hospital. it was never rebuilt. we are hunting for beds everywhere. dragon -- dr. peter bregen, after 40 years of working in this field, as come to the conclusion that drugs aren't any better than any of the treatment -- any other treatments, and the cost of all the medical complications from these neuroleptics are just

terrible. another person that people might hall, alook up is will schizophrenic who now has gone back to school and gives lectures across the country could he lives with his invoices and spend time without medication -- he lives with his voices and spent time without medication. what vermont has done is trying to get the thin land approach, which doesn't use neuroleptics finlandg to get the approach, which doesn't use neuroleptics, and they have an 85% cure rate. after five years there is no relapses -- host: all right, mac mcclelland, your thoughts. guest: you are right, there are light of -- there are a lot of side effects with antipsychotics. there are members of my family who are parasites get the fedex and they can attest to the side effects. there aredo --

members of my family who are paranoid schizophrenics and they can attest to the side effects. but they also do help people. when you don't use drugs and you is a great try to empower summoned to deal with they are having and rebuild -- try to empower them to do with the voices they're having and rebuild them in other ways. when i was reporting this story, i went to a working farm in ohio, where they have severely mentally ill people who -- they put him on medication but for the most part they try to get them more prepared to deal with society and that -- and get their global functioning up , and sort ofk being integrated into this community, and they have super high success rates. that model was perfected in europe a long, long time ago, and we're starting to see resurgence of it. it is cheaper than your standard institutionalization model, but

unfortunately, medicare in general doesn't cover it yet. that will be things that we see people moving in that direction. the policies will support people getting it, because right now there like that that you were talking about his private care. if you have a ton of money you can get that, but if you don't, it is not available to you. host: the working farm was a private business? guest: that's right. -- did theo how mentally ill who are participating in this voluntarily go in, did family access it? how does it work? guest: yeah, it was voluntary. if they wanted to go and do families -- it was a decision that they and their families may together that it would be a good place for them. none of these people were being dragged in there and locked away against their will. and it was beautiful. just this sort of a very pastoral range, and they have disgorge and -- gorgeous

belgian horses. i talked to some of the people who stayed there and we all had lunch together and they all had lunch together every day. they all seemed like they liked it, but it was because they have parents and other family members who had a bunch of money -- host: and how much does it cost, that sort of thing? guest: a couple hundred dollars a day. at over member exactly, but it might've been like $500 a day. -- i don't remember exactly, but it might've been like $500 a day. host: texas, independent caller. caller: i've been a special ed director and i have come to members who have been schizophrenic, having mental illnesses -- have family members who have been stood savannah, having mental illnesses. and i've always always been and wonder that in a so-called rich and state, -- and the so-called christian state,, we have mistreated the mentally ill in texas. we put to death retarded people, which is horrible.

there is no way that can happen. -- question that bothers me we are supposed to be christian, and i am a christian. christ is what we do to the least of our neighbors, you do unto me. and we are not living that way. we have a political party that pretends to be very conservative that has taken away -- started with reagan, like you said earlier -- taken away all the special ed institutions and put them out in the streets in california where they had to put them on buses. time a director at the and they put them on buses and ship them all over the united states. is that christian? i love to reagan. after he did that i had nothing to do with him. host: mac mcclelland. guest: yeah, you are right that it is sort of a measure -- some of the experts i was talking to -- it is a measure of how we are doing as a society on and terms of just basic humanity.

if we are completely abandoning people who are really vulnerable and really need assistance and sort of leaving them to the wolves, which in this case often ends up being on the street or in prisons. people don't have money. governments don't have money. they have to scale back. we're having all these huge economic issues. but when you do the math and you work out how much it costs to actually treat these people versus how much across not to, it is not saving anybody any money. to not offer them treatment would be asked one of the guys at the telephone a psychiatric association that i talk to but -- one of the guys at the california psychiatric association that i talk to says that $2000 or $3000 worth of treatment saves $50,000 in jail. it is not just a matter of humanity, but in terms of saving money and budgets and things that people seem to really care

about, it makes much more sense. guest: i'm not sure what they evaluate the population." host: just tying the mentally ill to the homeless population, what should be done there? guest: well, people know that a lot of the homeless are mentally ill. the estimates are that it is about 30% of the people you see on the streets are seriously mentally ill. again, this is a population that if you're got them treatment and assistance, that wouldn't be the case. homelessness exploded after deinstitutionalization, because people were let out onto the streets after being in institutions for a long time, and there was nothing to take care of them and no support when i got out.

got out.hey mental illness is a huge, huge factor in the super homeless rates that you see right now. talking with mac mcclelland, a contributing writer to "mother jones" who wrote the cover story, talking about, as she says, the insane cost of abandoning troubled minds. sharon, you are next in california, democratic caller. caller: good morning. ,'m concerned about this issue but from someone of a different angle, and i'm wondering if you did any research on this aspect. the cdc recently came out with a report that said one out of five u.s. children have mental disorders. that's 20%. some of these children are being treated with attention deficit disorder drugs. i'm wondering if you look into looking at environmental causes neuroo cognitive --

cognitive dysfunction. there was an article about people having neurotoxic ,ifficulties from lyme disease lyme exposure, and it was horrible. they had these e-mails from the federal government that show the national institute of health was referring to these people who as lyme roomies -- and they have been screaming for help for treatment when they are misdiagnosed as mentally ill or i'm wondering on did you look into that aspect at all, of the cost of mental illness in this country? guest: in terms of causes, unfortunately, there's not a lot of consensus with most mental illnesses. it's hard to say. with schizophrenia, -- and they

have been studying this for decades. they have people who will say you are born with this hardwiring in your brain and it is destined to happen at some point in her life, no matter what. -- in your life no matter what. you have new, more progressive research that is saying that there are a lot of environmental factors, social factors, even, that make it huge difference. there is no one answer, there is no true, obvious answer that you unfortunately. but they do know that you can treat most of this stuff and it makes a big difference in the way that you treated. while the causes aren't always clear, and they may not be clear for a really long time wherever -- it is super hard when you're talking about these disorders of the brain and things that don't to pin down as cause. but we know what the effects are and we know what the treatments

are that work. so focusing on that could solve the problem kind of no matter what the cause was to begin with. host: what motivated e.g you to write the story? guest: we wanted to do a piece about the mental-health budget .uts that have been happening states in the last three years have cut more than $4 billion from their mental-health budgets, which is an astronomical amount. as i mentioned before, there are several members of my family who are schizophrenic. , iaunt, my mom's sister grew up with her and she was schizophrenic before i was born. for my entire life. as it turned out, i have a cousin who was in jail for having murdered his father. he was never diagnosed before that, but once he got into jail, and he saw a whole bunch of psychiatrists who were evaluating him, it turned out

that he was schizophrenic as well. it is not just that -- it is not just an abstract sort of issue of cost and things like that in my family. i know what the cost is. and too many members of my family can say all too well what the greatest costs are. it cost my uncle's life. and my cousin, who is going to be institutionalized for a long time or possibly forever because of what he did. it just turned out that my family is just one family of countless families who have been impacted by this total abandonment of the mental-health system. host: what was it like for your family to try to access mental health for those in your family? guest: well, it was a lot easier a long time ago. in the 1970s, when my aunt had her first psychotic break, my

mom called her family doctor, and her family doctor said take her to this special hospital down the way. she took her to a psych hospital and that was that. there were a bunch of the psych hospitals in cleveland at that time. i was in the 1970s. and that was what you did then. -- that was in the 1970s. and that was what you did then. if somebody was having a nervous break down or needed some kind of mental help, you took them to a psych hospital and you knew that was there and that was her option. in terms of my cousin, and this was just about a year and a half saw a lot ofly warning signs. they knew that there was something wrong with him. he was acting totally different. now in retrospect he has been diagnosed as having a classic case of an onset of schizophrenia. he has all the typical symptoms, but they could not find help for him. they live in sonoma county, california, which has no psych hospitals. they couldn't find a place to take him.

that is unfortunately very common. half of the counties in california don't have psych hospitals. the only way to get into a psych hospital, where there are so few and their -- they are not near where you live and they are over full-time have wait lists, is to get arrested and thrown into one. i cousin didn't do anything -- my cousin didn't do anything wrong until he did something spectacularly wrong in summit ended up dead. host: mac mcclelland, we are showing your viewers as you are talking pictures of abandoned mental institutions that your colleague took. can you talk about these a little bit? , that is a photo project our photographer was working on for a really long time. he was sneaking into abandonment mental- abandoned institutions, basically, taking pictures. they're kind of amazing. you can tell from these pictures how hasty the emptying

of these institutions was. it is like people just walked up and got out one day and left everything behind. there is files all over the place, people's toothbrushes are still there. they are really spooky, but kind of a very powerful image that shows how fast this happened. host: the photograph that accompanied this story are part of an ongoing project called " : moraln asylums architecture of the 19th century." jeremy harris has been photographing these abandoned institutions over the past eight years. you can see more images at motherjones.com. chris you are next. pennsylvania, independent caller. caller: good morning. first of all, thank you for writing and speaking about this. i was a former public health student in pencil vinay, where where i just graduated, and i am going back to school in montgomery county, pennsylvania.

i studied a lot of mental health. i found out a lot of people generally don't like to talk about it, because of taboos or whether it is because of social factors that you talked about, or just the context nature of it. my question for you is twofold. where do you see the future of mental health under the patient protection and affordable care act? my second is, you are talking about how the budget cuts were taking place. ,ennsylvania is one of those unfortunately, under governor corbett, we seems to not care about mental-health -- who seems to not care about mental-health. how do you see that taking a toll on the future of mental health services, especially with medicaid services, in pennsylvania or texas or ohio, etc.? thank you. guest: well, again, it in terms of medicaid, it depends on the state. all of these states have taken on the burden, this enormous

burden of cost. don't mean that the people are a burden. but the costs are a burden and it is shifted to state and local the issues, and with medicaid and the way that they cover any expansion, for example, in ohio that they are proposing now because they cut it back so far that even the very republican governor of that state said that we are at a crisis point now with mental health care so are looking back at expanding it. it depends on where you live. in terms of the verbal health care act -- the affordable health care act, it in just the last three years we have cut more than $4 billion out of the state budgets. access to healthcare is, in a lot of cases, not these people 's problem. it is not that they don't have insurance and up-to-date can't get medicare or medicaid, it is that the facilities that don't exist for them.

even people who have insurance can't get assistance that they need. for example, i have health insurance, and it is good health and it covers six sessions of therapy for my life or something like that. insurance is a great step for a lot of things, but having to makee is not enough up the gaps in care that we have in this country. point you made in the article and where we started this conversation, in the 1950s more than half of people living in mental institutions, one in three americans. that is one psychiatric bed for 71 americans. bill, democratic caller.

mac, first of all, thank you for the book you did on a burma. you made a positive contribution to the progress that has been made in the last year or so. in order to solve this problem -- congress created this problem and congress can solve the problem. tomrder to affect congress a congress response to groups of affect-- in order to congress, congress response to groups of people. can you tell our audience what groups of people they should be getting in contact with to pressure congress to reinstitute psychiatric hospitals and solve the problem in order to -- in order to solve this, we have to act out individually, but as groups. thank you. you're right. congress could solve it. commerce did actually solve it

when they -- congress did actually solve it when they rode the act to step up funding for community mental health care centers, when they realized there wasn't that was supposed to come after the deinstitutionalization. guttedin, it ended up and it never happened. for instituting something like that could go a long, long way. something likeg that could go a long, long way. it is easy to say if we had billions of dollars we could solve the problem. you can say that about pretty much anything. it is a time of tight budgets and we don't have money to throw all over the place. but if people would actually look at the costs of treating versus not treating and the way -- they are going to spend the money anyway. they are spending the money anyway. we are spending it on prisons and we're spending in on crime and police forces. my cousin, who is in jail now waiting to be moved to a state facility and will be in a state

.acility possibly forever just a year in jail costs $50,000, not to mention the costs of his trial, and police time and judges and court and things like that. it is not cheaper to not treat them. the connection is the way people talked about it. that's not the way to the math is done. the conversation is just that we need to save money, we can save it by cutting all of these expenses from the mental health care budgets. but that is not true. and that this conversation was had in a more realistic way -- like, ok, if we cut this from here, this is what it is going to cost in jail and prisons and other sorts of issues -- then i think that that sort of reframing could make a population -- a couple of that theave mentioned

mentally ill are not a value population in this society. people think that they are sort of worthless and they are just a drain on society and they can't lead productive lives and things like that. you know, it's not true. if you get them the treatment that they need, they will end up costing much, much less in terms of dollars, in terms of lives, in terms of crime and homelessness in the long run. wrote themcclelland cover story for "mother jones" magazine. she is also, as that caller referred to, the author of a for us surrender is out of the question." @macmclelland. sarasota, florida, independent caller. caller: i think if you would like to see something to explain what those people sitting on the

side of the road as you walk by, you might try schizophrenia -- it is on youtube. educational video. 20 minutes of your time. nine minutes and 30 seconds and you see what goes through the minds of people. the second is clozapine -- that drug costs $20 for a week. it is the nearest substitute in our highly funded drug industry, $180 a week. do the math again and again and you will see there is only a few things wrong with that drug clozapine. it is black label the now. to you,an incentive dear -- you probably do know that. explain that to people how a drug that would work, that can be given in suicide situations, that will take away the suicidal pains, and also do

with different issues like memory disasters and working memory disasters, when the outside stimulus is so strong that you can't even see straight rat. host: mac mcclelland? guest: actually, it's interesting. a video that he mentioned has been recommended to me before. after my cousin's murder trial was over, his lawyer was recommending it to people to give them a better idea of what it is like to be schizophrenic, because people are scared of severely mentally ill people. they think that they are sort of unpredictable and unhinged and don't know what is going on. and of course, it is a lot more competent than that. -- a lot more competent it than that. i grew up with schizophrenics in my family, obviously. but learning a little bit more

about it is definitely a good way -- good first first step to removing some of that stigma. it is not mysterious people think. host -- it is not as scary as people think. host: ed in georgia. hi, ed. caller: hello. i'm really happy you made the point about the prison system and taking up most of the slack in our mental-health system or lack of mental-health system. i want to make the point that if we could spend some money -- actually, we spent a tremendous amount of money on education -- whatever it would take to identify kids with issues, we could stop so many things. we could identify them, we could follow them through high school and even college, where a lot of these problems come from. young girls commit suicide. boys kill people before they kill themselves.

i think that if we did that we could also stop some of the violence in inner cities. if we just identify these kids early on. guest: i think that is right. early screening is definitely an important part traded is is not a thing that we do now. we screen for lots of stuff in schools but we don't screen for mental illness in most cases. it could make a really big difference. again, when i was talking to this sort of -- this area in awntown frien san francisco wih crime is skyhigh, the most violent neighborhood in the a lot ofty, there is homeless people, a lot of addicts who live on the streets and things like that -- the director of the community mental-health center there was saying that most of the the people who come in here are some first of ptsd. the poster manic stress disorder, -- they have poster

manic stress disorder, and not because they are veterans, but because of something serious happened in their childhood. there -- this is an old, that can cause a lot of problems and can cause problems for decades or for life. if childhood trauma was a thing that you look for in schools and treated, yeah, you could save a lot of substance abuse, a lot of later violence, a lot of later social problems and things like that. most of the people who are going into this clinic for help have a highly treatable disorder that they have had for a very, very long time and that could have been caught earlier. the other thing is with things like ptsd, the longer it goes -- schizophrenia, bipolar -- the longer you let it go without any treatment, and the more trouble that the person gets in, the more isolation that they end up with in